Ferrari 250 GT Tour de France

The Tour de France berlinetta at a glance

Why the long-wheelbase berlinetta was built

By the mid-1950s Ferrari sold the 250 GT as a road coupé, but its customers also wanted a car for the new Gran Turismo racing classes. The answer was a lighter, more powerful berlinetta on the same 2,600 mm tubular chassis used for the Boano and Ellena road cars. It is often called the "long-wheelbase berlinetta", or LWB, to separate it from the 2,400 mm SWB that followed.

The car appeared in spring 1956. Its first outing, chassis 0503GT in the Giro di Sicilia in April 1956, ended with a class win. Within months the Marquis Alfonso de Portago had won the ten-day Tour de France Automobile in chassis 0557GT, and the name stuck. The event mixed circuit races, hill climbs and timed road sections across France, so a win there proved both speed and toughness.

Ferrari's own history notes stress that "Tour de France" was never an official model name. Period documents simply say 250 GT Berlinetta, and the factory referred to the frame as type 508 with suffix letters for later updates.

Four body series and the Interim cars

Pinin Farina designed the body, and Scaglietti built almost all of them in aluminium in Modena. The shape changed four times in three seasons, so the series can be told apart by the vents behind the side windows, which are called the sail panels.

In 1959 most cars lost their covered headlamps because Italian lighting rules changed. Some owners also had full bumpers fitted, which was rare on cars built for racing. The rear window was flat on the early cars, and the rear wings gained vertical tail lamps in the first revision, as the old version of this page noted.

Colombo V12, gearbox and chassis

The engine is the short-block 60-degree V12 designed by Gioacchino Colombo. It has an aluminium block and heads, cast-iron liners and one overhead camshaft per bank. Bore and stroke are 73 × 58.8 mm, which gives 2,953 cc, or close to 250 cc per cylinder, hence the "250" name.

Three twin-choke Weber carburettors, type 36 DCL3 or 36 DCZ3, feed the cylinders. Factory engine types ran from 128 to 128B, 128C, 128D and finally 128DF, the late version with its spark plugs moved to the outside of the heads. Early cars made 177 kW (240 PS), and the late 128DF engines were claimed to reach about 191 kW (260 PS).

Power goes through a four-speed, all-synchromesh gearbox and a propeller shaft to a rigid rear axle, which could be ordered with several ratios. Early cars had either a central or an offset gear lever; from 1958 the central lever became standard. The front suspension uses double wishbones and coil springs. All cars left the works with left-hand drive.

Ferrari 250 GT Tour de France specifications

By our calculation, 191 kW and about 1,130 kg give roughly 5.9 kg per kW, which was a strong figure for a closed GT car of 1958. You can test the same ratio for other cars with the power-to-weight calculator.

Racing record from 1956 to 1959

The car's fame rests on long road-and-circuit events rather than single sprints. Olivier Gendebien was its most successful driver in France.

Private owners kept racing these cars after 1959. In 1960, for example, chassis 1357GT won its class in the Targa Florio.

TdF compared with the SWB and the road coupé

The three closed 250 GT cars of the late 1950s share the Colombo V12 but differ in purpose. The figures below come from the sources used for this page.

Compared with the SWB, the TdF is 200 mm longer between the axles and still relies on drum brakes, so it feels older on track. Compared with the road coupé, it is lighter and more powerful but far less comfortable. To set any two modern cars side by side, use the 1cars comparison tool.

Cabin and road use

The interior was plain but finished with care, and most cabins were trimmed by Scaglietti. A three-spoke steering wheel with the prancing-horse badge faced two large dials: a speedometer marked to 300 km/h and a rev counter. Comfort came second to weight, as the class rules rewarded a light car.

Owners did drive these cars on the road, which was the point of the GT rules. Ferrari published no fuel or performance data for the series, and no reliable top-speed figure has survived. Today the cars are used in historic rallies such as the Tour Auto, the modern revival of the Tour de France Automobile.

Collecting a Tour de France today

A 250 GT TdF is one of the most valuable Ferraris of the 1950s. In 2008, chassis 1385GT sold at an RM Auctions sale in London for a reported 2,255,000 pounds sterling (about €2.8 million at the time). Prices have risen since, so a recent public sale is the only useful guide. Buyers should check:

• Body series: the louvre pattern and headlamps should match the chassis number and its documented history.
• Engine: the original engine type, from 128 to 128DF, should be present; many cars had replacement units in period.
• Race history: class wins or Tour de France entries add value but must be backed by period records.
• Certification: Ferrari Classiche papers and an independent marque expert's report.

For the complete 250 family, start with the 250 GT Coupé built by Boano, Ellena and Pinin Farina, then read about the successor, the 250 GT SWB berlinetta. The sports-racing sister car is the 250 Testa Rossa.